Collaboration on the move has a long way to go, survey finds

Look around any airport, restaurant or train platform and the sea of faces buried in smartphones and tablets will immediately confirm your suspicion that we’re increasingly working on the go. But while the ability to get online anywhere with portable devices may be allowing us to be more productive out of the office than ever before, a new survey released today from collaboration tools company harmon.ie reveals remote collaboration is still far from painless.

The survey asked 500 U.S. respondents about their mobile working habits and unsurprisingly found that as a nation we’re pretty addicted to working outside the office. Seventy-seven percent of those surveyed told harmon.ie they finish documents, proposals or presentations while on the road, with 56 percent of respondents admitting to working with documents while in a restaurant and 29 percent while stuck in traffic. One in seven even admitted to conducting business while in the bathroom. A measly three percent said that they have no need to collaborate with coworkers while outside of the office.

With our mobile working addiction reaching the typing while on the toilet stage, you might think that we’d have collectively perfected our tools and processes for being productive on the go. But according to harmon.ie’s results you’d be wrong. A shocking 84 percent of traveling executives and managers reported that they cannot work effectively while on-the-go, despite their iPads and smartphones. Other figured from the survey back up this picture of less than perfectly productive mobile workers:

54 percent of those surveyed reported lower personal productivity while on the go

43 percent reported that they are often missing key information to complete a project

32 percent said that they often make mistakes in critical documents while on the go

Half of all respondents reported difficulties in getting input from colleagues in a timely manner

41 percent said they work off potentially out-of-date documents

“We live in an era of what we call BYOD and with that comes the expectation that every important application and document will be available while walking around with an iPad or smartphone,” said Yaacov Cohen, CEO of harmon.ie. “The reality? Not so much.”

Does this mesh with your experience – despite all your gadgets do you still struggle to be maximally productive while on the go?